The present disclosure relates generally to information handling systems, and more particularly to determining an information handling system through which to access a multi-chassis Link Aggregation Group (LAG).
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Some information handling systems such as, for example, networking switches, are configured to aggregate multiple links to the networking switch using Link Aggregation Groups (LAGs) in order to increase throughput beyond what a single link can sustain, to provide redundancy in the event one or more links fail, and/or to provide a variety of other LAG benefits known in the art. In some situations, such networking switches may utilize multi-chassis LAGs that aggregate links that connect to different networking nodes. For example, Virtual Link Trunking (VLT) is an aggregation protocol that may be used on Top Of Rack (TOR) networking switches to aggregate links to different networking nodes connected to the TOR networking switch. In some situations, a VLT LAG may be provided on a TOR networking switch for respective direct links to a plurality of networking nodes (“directly-linked networking nodes”), and that plurality of directly-linked networking nodes may be connected together by inter-chassis links to one or more networking nodes that do not have a direct link to the TOR networking switch that is a part of the VLT LAG (“indirectly-linked networking nodes”). The connection of directly-linked networking nodes by indirectly-linked networking nodes raises a number of issues.
For example, when an indirectly-linked networking node receives traffic that must be forwarded through the TOR networking switch using the VLT LAG, that indirectly-linked networking node must send that traffic through a directly-linked networking node to reach the VLT LAG. In conventional VLT LAG systems that include directly-linked networking nodes that are connected by indirectly-linked networking nodes, one of the directly-linked networking nodes is typically designated as a LAG access networking node that is then used by all of the indirectly-linked networking nodes to send traffic that must be forwarded through the TOR networking switch using the VLT LAG (i.e., all of the indirectly-linked networking nodes provide any traffic that must be forwarded through the TOR networking switch using the VLT LAG through that LAG access networking node). Such conventional VLT LAG systems often provide non-optimal traffic routing and do not provide load balancing (i.e., because all traffic from indirectly-linked networking nodes must flow through the same LAG access networking node). One solution to this problem is to designate different LAG access networking nodes for different subsets of the indirectly-linked networking nodes (e.g., based on the Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) accessible through that LAG access networking node). However, the directly-linked networking node designated as the LAG access networking node for a given subset of indirectly-linked networking nodes will often not be the optimal networking node through which a particular indirectly-linked networking node should forward traffic, thus resulting in non-optimal traffic routing that produces traffic delays and/or reduced traffic throughput.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a LAG access networking node determination system.